In recent news from Kotaku, we have seen the developers of "Battlefront 2," EA, temporarily remove micro-transactions from their video game. These micro-transactions were deemed as "pay-to-win." The removal was caused by a plethora of complaints from the community. This is not the first time that something like this has occurred, but it is definitely the first time that a company has taken action as quickly as EA did. An example of a company that took similar action would be Blizzard.

Pay-to-win?

Blizzard removed the auction house, although it took them years.

Pay-to-win can be defined as being able to buy special items in order to gain an advantage over those who are playing for free. The auction house in "Diablo 3" was just as "pay-to-win" as the loot boxes in “Star Wars Battlefront 2” were. Nobody truly knows the real reason behind the fast action that EA has taken, but some speculate that it could have been pressure from Disney. Whatever the cause was, the removal was good news for both the game and the entire industry, since nobody likes the concept of pay-to-win games.

Current state

In most of the games in today's day and age, you will find some sort of in-game currency or loot box. It might not bother some, but this system has the potential to cause a complete downfall in the gaming community.

Micro-transactions used to be found only in multiplayer games, but it has been spreading recently in recent single-player games, such as “Middle-earth: Shadow of War” and “WWE 2K18.” Micro-transactions are effectively dividing gamers. People who can afford to spend money on these in-game purchases will save precious time, while those who cannot, will have to spend hours grinding for the items or currency that they desire.

This is a major issue and we should not support the way that greedy developers treat the people who spend their hard-earned money on their video games. The Ultimate Team mode in “FIFA 18” is a major source of cash flow for EA. No matter what, gamers will spend money on it, and this time next year it will be forgotten, as “FIFA 19” will come round to steal the spotlight.

It's easy to understand now why a single-player game with no micro-transactions is welcomed so greatly. This is also why many gamers prefer indie games, as they generally never take advantage of the buyers with these so-called "micro-transactions."

In recent times, the quality of video games has depreciated, while the influx of micro-transactions just keeps increasing. Micro-transactions could be considered if the game was of excellent quality, but unfortunately, this is often not the case.
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